Scotland 9 - Western Skye and Dunvegan

Adam's skepticism
is appropriate.

The E/H/A crew headed out early to visit Fairie Beach. Having visited a beach yesterday, I felt no need to hike to another beach, and opted for the slow-train out. Our goal was to meet them at a castle at 10am, so we packed some lunches and headed out to kill time on our drive to the castle. Our first spot was Fairie Bridge. It was.... an old bridge. But only an old bridge. IMO, not even worth a pin on google maps, let alone the fey moniker, which left us with even more time to kill. 

So I directed our crew to a [disappointingly modern] rock on google maps! But as we arrived, we learned said rock was on top of a hill, and we can see so many rocks without hiking uphill.  So I pointed our crew past the castle, down a one-lane, and out to a viewpoint!  This was a decent stop, and we could look back across the water and see today's castle!  Definitely lacked the zoom lens needed to really flaunt it, but as an excuse to hike down a random beach - 10/10. I found a raft of kelp that had washed ashore, which made a fun slippery-bubblewrap trailbed. Some of the rocks were treacherous, some were great, and there was a bigass heron! It's official name is Grey Heron [my note to the editor said "check and make sciency"...  Ardea Cinerea is the third largest bird in Britain]. I made the mistake of choosing a different trail back to the car. It was not a trail, it was a dry(!) stream-bed lined with brambles. An hour later Adam plucked a tick from my pants.... 

Having successfully burned off the wee hours it was time to head to the castle! Where, after a potty break, GRAMMY AND POPS WERE THERE! Super exciting, and E/H/A also magically appeared from the diaper room scant minutes later. Reunited as a family, we planned to impress a passer-by into taking a family portrait, but several locals volunteered before we'd even found our footing. Another checkbox ticked, we headed into the castle where they told Sage that there was a key hidden in every room, and it was a fun game to see how many of them she could find!  So of course the whole family became heavily invested in finding keys. Significantly more invested than Sage. 

The castle is a charming amalgamation of rework ranging from the 1200s to 1800s, built on foundations they claim date back to the 1000s. It was also never turned into three floors of military bunks, never abandoned, and never exploded by southron bastards -  meaning it's in amazing condition and still full of the family heirlooms. In addition to the standard muskets, plates, and blades it featured: an elephant tusk, a wooden cup over a  millennia old, and the traditional coronation drinking-horn (If you can't chug 1.5 liters of claret you're a whelp not fit for royalty).  It's a very cute castle, and the tour route is nicely calibrated to be fun but not overwhelming. 

Out on the back green, looked out over the bay (and the beach we trod this morning) where we saw a boat turn into the harbour. - "Is that the seal tour?" - "OH. BECAUSE THE SEALS!" 

We counted 17 seals chilling on the spit of stone across from the castle, with a few more swimming in the harbor. All doing cute seal things (mostly loafing). We passed the binocs around to all the tourists in courtyard, and eventually tore ourselves away to finish up the castle. On our way out, we reported our key-count to the doorman! 11! He informed us there were 17, and pointed out one we'd missed right where we were standing. That stung a bit.... 

Next, we did the castle gardens. Some practical gardens for food and spices, and then the more typical manor-grounds intended to show off the family's wealth - in this case featuring waterfalls which was a nice touch. We finished up with a visit to the cafe to supplement our packed lunches and ate outside, which required imprisoning a few bees under our cups but was otherwise quite nice. All in all, I enjoyed this castle more than the two bigger ones, and not just because it had seals - though I admit I'm biased on that front.

After lunch, we split up again. Half for naps, and half for Dun Beag Broch. Also known as Dunvegan Fort, it is a stone ring much like those in Ireland: Dry-stacked rocks on the top of a mountain and about 1500 years old. Slightly more advanced than the Irish versions, Dun Beag has two walls buttressed so they could build it taller - most estimates place it around 30'. Now crumbled to a fifth that, it's still an impressive build with stairs and chambers surviving to this day.  The most surprising part is the sheep poopoos everywhere, including on top of the ruined walls. Which also means there are sheep close enough to be gently encouraged to pose by the ruins. Adam put it best:  "Rocks, sheep, ocean. Done. Perfect picture."

On our hike back down to the car I slipped on the muddy trail (stream) and totally soaked a buttock, so I sat on my jacket and it was off to the fairy pools! I'm pretty sure they just realized in the 1910s or something they could prepend "fairy" to anything and tourists would flock to it. It's still working.

After finding a spot in the massive lot, we descended a steep half mile. past a rock [click reviews], to the bottommost pool. At this point, A/D decided to send it (with Oli literally along for the ride), while my parents opted to follow at Sage-pace. I chose the aggressive option, which meant almost two miles uphill, climbing past a dozen waterfalls towards their source at the base of the mountain. All the "Fairy Pools" are basins hollowed out by waterfalls as River Brittle cascades down the hillside... Inviting looking, but I saw no kelpies, and a woman enjoying a dip at the peak proved my suspicion they weren't fatal. However the pools dragged in tourists by the busload, even folk not made for hiking - which might include me.  Like half of us, I was pushing - as we neared the top I was just pacing Adam and Dani, no thought to the scenery, no thoughts at all really, aerobic autopilot carrying me to the finish line.

Note the carpark
in the far distance

It was worth it to see the mountain up close, even if the pools didn't strictly justify the hike [I'm sensing a pattern here.] The hike back down was more fun. Dani set a quick pace (she was afraid my parents would try to carry Sage out of the valley), which meant we were speed walking down a broken trail. Once it started level out (relatively speaking) Dani decided to jog the rest of it. Nope, I'm out. I'm already sweating and fighting off midges ("No-see-ums" are the worst bit of Scotland. We intentionally chose September to avoid them, which has worked so far - maybe midges are the true fey in these pools?). Off in the distance, Dani then picked up 35 pounds of toddler and pushed up 100' of elevation. That woman is built different.

After that last brutal uphill and some recovery, the whole crew reconvened for some pretentious pizza (venison salami, artisanal sundried tomatoes, spice imbued honey - it was delicious) to finish up the day. We put the kids to bed, discussed possible hikes for the morning (A/E are debating between Quiraing and Storr), and I was the last to head to bed - at the late hour of 9pm.